Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

Her work was basic and uninteresting. She had just turned twenty. Everyone’s work is basic and uninteresting at twenty.

girls like Sadie were conditioned to ignore the sexist generally, not just in gaming—it wasn’t cool to point such things out. If you wanted to play with the boys, they couldn’t be afraid of saying things around you.

He had said it would be trouble if she came to his apartment, and still she had gone. If someone tells you there will be trouble, believe them.

So, he protected Sam, and he made the world a little easier for Sam, and it cost him next to nothing to do so.

Friendship,” Marx said, “is kind of like having a Tamagotchi.”

His mistake had been in thinking the world would be filled with Sadie Greens, people like her. It was not.

But to find someone who you wanted to talk to for 609 hours—that was rare. Even Marx—Marx was devoted, creative, and bright, but he was not Sadie.

I am, as you know, a bottomless pit of ambition and need.

Other people’s parents are often a delight.

And what is the alternative to appropriation? Kotaku: I don’t know. Mazer: The alternative to appropriation is a world in which artists only reference their own cultures.

this is the truth of any game—it can only exist at the moment that it is being played.

In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.”

In a way, Marx found producing for Sadie and Sam to be not entirely different from just being Sam’s roommate. Without calling a great deal of attention to himself, he made things easy for them. He fought fires. He anticipated needs and obstacles before they arose. That is what a producer does, and Marx would turn out to be a very fine producer.

“I doubt that leaves you enough time to get here and get a community service timesheet together.”

He wanted Ichigo’s life, a lifetime of endless, immaculate tomorrows,

The attending nurse, who was in her sixties and approaching retirement, let them stay until midnight. She was enjoying the sound of their laughter, their banter, and their gentle teasing.

“No. You’ll never die. And if you ever died, I’d just start the game again,” Sadie said.

The universe tortured you because it could, because it will. The enormous polyhedral die in the sky was rolled, and it came up ‘Torture Sam Masur.’

“What’s the most beautiful woman in Koreatown drinking?”

“The good news is that the pain is in your head.” But I am in my head, Sam thought.

Unfortunately, the human brain is every bit as closed a system as a Mac.

They were standing outside the Silver Lake restaurant Marx had selected because of its proximity to Sam’s place. The restaurant had a tree growing in the center of it, and it was famous for being the best place on the Eastside to break up with someone.

“You’re an afternoon woman, sexy Sadie. You don’t want to meet someone like you too early in your life, or you won’t ever like anyone else.”

She was smart, funny, tough, pushy, a little mean. But smart was the main thing Sam liked about Lola. She wasn’t special smart, like Sadie, but she was smart.

“Because it’s perfect,” Marx said. “ ‘Tamer of horses’ is an honest profession. The lines mean that one doesn’t have to be a god or a king for your life to have meaning.” “Hector is us,” Sadie said. “Hector is us,” Marx repeated.

“Our theoretical baby can’t be called Spreadsheet1.xls,” she commented. She retitled the spreadsheet “Green Watanabe Summer 2006 Game.”

It’s a Japanese custom called senbazuru. If you make one thousand paper cranes, you can restore someone to good health. Though you cannot see him, you become aware of the fact that your father is sitting on the floor. He is folding cranes so that your mother can string them.

How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky?

“Do I dare?” she asks. “You dare.”

There are no ghosts, but up here”—she gestured toward her head—“it’s a haunted house.”

Find you? I built this place for you. Pioneers is a period extension of Mapleworld. I made it look like Oregon Trail because I knew you would like it.

To build a world for someone seems a romantic thing from where I stand.” Dov shook his head. “Sam Masur, that fucked-up, romantic kid.”

“If you come, I have a Donkey Kong machine in my office. Old friends play free.”